One of the joys of reviewing is forcing yourself to distil how you truly feel about a piece of art. The more complicated your initial feelings, the more fun the review is. As such, I should note the first words I spoke about Blighted Eye‘s full length debut, Agony’s Bespoke, were that it was “all foreplay no climax”. I might well have left Blighted Eye there if I hadn’t agreed to review it; after all, the process of finding out whether you like something or not is yet another perk of reviewing.
Turns out I did.
Blighted Eye play a style of progressive death metal that’s rooted in taking the layered melodies of Opeth and Dark Tranquillity and feeding them up to make them thicker and fiercer, like some wild boar out of old mythology. The result is a dense and subtle sound that rewards attentive listening. It was the instant appeal of the tremolo melodies on song five, “A Feast of Worms”, that first started getting me on board with Agony’s Bespoke but once I was listening close, I found intriguing little gems all over the place. The stop-start drum fills from John Devos at the beginning of ‘The Wounding’ before the fury takes over. The Opeth-ian evolution of the riffs in the middle of “Howls Beyond the Mist” and the doom inflected intro to “Pallid”. There are just so many great moments here. The only problem is that I never spot all of these in one sitting because at an hour long, Agony’s Bespoke is simply too lenghty to be attentive to all the way through. Having nearly every song go over six minutes is a tough trick to pull off too and Blighted Eye don’t quite do it. Many of them go on one passage too long for me. Yes, I’m looking at you especially, “In Enmity”. As problems go, this is a major one. I get wanting to create powerful, cathartic moments through patient build-up, but the build-up goes on too long and robs from the impact Blighted Eye were hoping for. For all I really like so much of what the band is doing, that climax comment still holds somewhat true.
Even with that disagreement over editing considered, I’m dead impressed by what Blighted Eye have done on Agony’s Bespoke. This is a tour de force on what can be done regarding melodically inclined progressive death metal. They bring a freshness to old ideas and tread the fine line between variety and lacking cohesiveness with aplomb. It took me some time to see it, but Blighted Eye have given us one of the debuts of the year and I’m rooting for them to go even further.
